PR Lions shortlist dominated by ad agencies, Ogilvy, the US and Brazil

The shortlist for the Cannes PR Lions demonstrates the strength of WPP's Ogilvy and Ogilvy & Mather networks, which claimed 24 out of the 181 entries that made it through to compete for the Grand Prix tomorrow night.

Shortlisted: INGO Stockholm's work for European supermarket chain Lidl

Among the individual agencies mounting a strong challenge are Droga5 New York, leading the field with 6 nominations, and several ad agencies including JWT Brazil Sao Paolo, Grey New York, Creative Artists Agency LA, Ogilvy & Mather India Mumbai, each with 4 nominations.

Ketchum and Edelman London represent the PR industry’s best chance of success, with the former securing 4 nominations as entrant agency and the latter 3.

Ketchum scored two out of three nominations in the crisis communications and issue management category. Ketchum Sports & Entertainment New York was shortlisted for its PRWeek Global Award-winning campaign to keep wrestling as an Olympic sport and Ketchum Washington for its 'Don't Ground America' campaign for the airline industry.

Edelman London was nominated twice for work for storage products company Albal (with Edelman Madrid as a joint credit) and once for its #sharethesofa work for Heineken.

However, big names such as Golin (formerly GolinHarris), FleishmanHillard and Prime did not secure any nominations either as the main entrant or a joint credit.

The field appears to be relatively open at an individual agency level, with 116 separate agencies (and six client companies submitting their own entries) and 40 countries represented.

By country the US secured the most nominations, 35, followed in order by Brazil, Australia, the UK and Argentina.

Country

Nominations

1

USA

35

2

Brazil

18

3

Australia

13

4

United Kingdom

11

5

Argentina

9

But one of the most striking aspects of the shortlist was the geographical strength of Ogilvy and Ogilvy & Mather, which achieved nominations from Argentina, India, Thailand, Italy, Poland, China, Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, France, the US and Australia.

In addition, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide was represented twice as a joint credit.

Edelman New York secured three nominations as a joint credit, with Edelman London and Edelman Sydney also cropping up once each. Two other PR agencies also secured three nominations as a joint credit: Prostor PR and Consulting Moscow and Eleven PR Sydney.

Among the agencies with two nominations as a joint credit were Weber Shandwick Chicago, Ketchum Los Angeles, and In Press Porter Novelli Sao Paolo.

There were 1,850 entries, up 43 per cent on last year. Here are the most competitive categories: